Four more deaths announced in US – as it happened

A health worker escorts a patient to a hospital in Iran as the death toll in the country rose to 66 and the total number of confirmed cases to 1,501.
Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Nike shuts European HQ after employee infection

Nike will close its European headquarters in the Netherlands on Monday and Tuesday after an employee was infected with the coronavirus, the Dutch news agency ANP said.

Citing an internal email, ANP reported overnight that the office in Hilversum would be disinfected. The employee was staying home in isolation for 14 days, it said. Roughly 2,000 employees from 80 countries work at the site.

A Nike representative could not immediately be reached for comment. Dutch health authorities have reported 10 coronavirus infections since 28 February.

Kerry Chant is now talking about how they identify close contacts with confirmed cases. She says health authorities are working through the process of getting in touch with contacts of people diagnosed.

There’s particular concern with regards to the health worker who has been diagnosed and who he has been in contact with.

She says it wouldn’t be surprising if the healthcare worker had been in contact with people over 65 years of age.

Australia confirms community transmission of virus

Brad Hazzard, the New South Wales health minister is now speaking. He confirms that there are three new cases of Covid-19 in the case, taking the total to 9.

One of the new cases was a man who arrived from Iran on Saturday, the day before the travel ban on entry from Iran began. The man’s sister has also been confirmed as having the virus. She had not travelled to Iran so, he says it appears she caught the infection in NSW.

“It’s likely that the transmission has occurred from her brother,” Hazzard says.

A 53-year-old health worker has also tested positive.

Hazzard says that case is likely the second likely case of “person-to-person transmission”.

The health worker has continued worked and NSW health is now looking at where he has been working and who he has been working with.

He says there are no indications that anyone else is infected at the moment.

Health experts have warned that the lack of confirmed patients in Indonesia, a country of 272 million people, was surprising, especially given its close links to China.

Last month, researchers at Harvard University analysed air traffic from Wuhan, the Chinese city where the outbreak originated, and concluded case numbers were lower than expected. They also raised concerns about other Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand and Cambodia. At the time, Indonesian health minister Terawan Agus Putranto called the study “insulting”.

Further concerns were raised when New Zealand and Malaysia reported that patients who tested positive for their disease within their borders had recently traveled to Indonesia.

On Saturday, Ary Hermawan of the Jakarta Post, questioned whether officials were being transparent, adding that the government appeared more worried “about the social and economic impact of a mass hysteria created by the virus outbreak than the outbreak itself”.

Indonesia’s Balitbangkes, the sole agency tasked with testing suspected coronavirus patients, had only concluded around 140 lab tests, he wrote. “To put things in perspective, as of 26 February, the United Kingdom has conducted 7,132 tests, 13 of which have come back positive.”

Details of the two cases confirmed by officials on Monday are not yet known, though Indonesian President Joko Widodo said both patients were Indonesians and that they had been hospitalised.